Roland Boer's Blog, page 55

Nothing in Denmark is free – except this

I have become used to the relatively high cost of things in Denmark and I always assumed one would never find anything free. However, the other day we were walking through the forest and happened upon this intriguing site:

I went in to look, finding what we would call a bush camping site (right next to the ancient deer park):

It sports state-of-the-art grass, forest and … toilets:

And there’s even a place to warm yourself and cook some food:

And the best thing of all is that it is free. N...

Nothing in Denmark are free – except this

I have become used to the relatively high cost of things in Denmark and I always assumed one would never find anything free. However, the other day we were walking through the forest and happened upon this intriguing site:

I went in to look, finding what we would call a bush camping site (right next to the ancient deer park):

It sports state-of-the-art grass, forest and … toilets:

And there’s even a place to warm yourself and cook some food:

And the best thing of all is that it is free. N...

Beijing conference: The International Horizon of Chinese Marxist Discourse

I have giving a reasonable amount of my energy this year to two projects and associated conferences. In a few months (13-15 August) is the ‘China Road‘ conference in Newcastle, but in less than a couple of weeks is another conference: The International Horizon of Chinese Marxist Discourse. This is part of a project funded by the Beijing Centre for Studies of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. One of its purposes is to begin a more serious international discussion of current Chinese Marxi...

Another article on the ‘Warm Stream’

These days it seems that journals are happy to enable the first fifty readers to access a new article without direct access to the journal. This seems to be the case with another new article, ‘Concerning the “Warm Stream” within Marxism’. Published by Taylor and Francis for the Academy of Marxism, within the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, it has appeared in the latest issue ofInternational Critical Thought.

Stalin: What Does the Name Stand For?

A new and absolute bumper issue of Crisis and Critique is just out, edited by Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda. It concerns none other than Joseph Stalin. I have a rather long piece in it called ‘A Materialist Doctrine of Good and Evil: Stalin’s Revision of Marxist Anthropology’. It can be found here.

Class and grain

As part of our research forThe Time of Troubles, we have come across the class struggle of grain, or perhaps the in-grained class struggle. Our focus is the Hellenistic era in the eastern Mediterranean.When we enter our era, barley and two basic types of hulled wheat – emmer (Triticum dicoccum) in wetter areas and einkorn (Triticum monococcum) in the Levant and parts of northern Greece – were dominant. Apart from areas under irrigation (such as Egypt or lower Mesopotamia) or well-watered by o...

The pleasure of sewing

Like tiling, one of the great pleasures of life is … to sew. It has been some years since I have had a sewing machine. In the meantime, I have satisfied myself with occasional bouts of hand sewing. But for my last birthday, I bought a sewing machine. It has sat at home, waiting for me to return from China for a couple of weeks. Yesterday, we became familiar with one another, filling a few bobbins, remembering how to thread and then use the machine. Today, we began the first few of many happy...

Conference in Transylvania on Multiculturalism

In October, I am off to one of the great places in the world: Transylvania. It is for a conference in Baia Mare, but the experience is much more than merely a conference. If you can go, go. I’ll be talking on socialist theory and practices concerning nationalities, with China as a case study.

The International Conference of Cultural Studies

“Multiculturalism and the Need for Recognition”

Baia Mare, 14-16 October, 2016

Key note speakers:

Professor Roland Boer, Newcastle University, Australi...

Actually existing socialist democracy

The usual material you find trotted out in the corporate media is that China is an authoritarian state that suppresses any form of ‘democracy’. For some reason, they fail to explain what actually happens here, which is the gradual development of socialist democracy. For instance, how are delegates elected for the annual parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), and the advisory body, the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)? By elections...

Xi Jinping the Marxist: two telling comments

The word about the place here in China is that Chairman Xi Jinping (yes, that is what his Chinese title is, mistranslated at ‘president’) is the most theoretically aware and sophisticated leader since Chairman Mao. People are saying that he has a theoretical ability in Marxism that was somewhat missing from the practical orientations of the previous three holders of his post. Needless to say, I have been following to local news in some detail, especially in relation to the ‘two sessions’, hel...